Framing the Campaign

PPS was brought in by social entrepreneur Mark Gorton to work with his technology-focused non-profit, The Open Planning Project (TOPP), and the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives (TA), to develop a new campaign model for transportation reform. The campaign was framed to build on TA’s effective pedestrian and bicycle advocacy in order to create a movement that facilitates, informs and inspires a broad network of partners towards a bold vision for reinventing NYC’s streets as vibrant public places.

Launching the Campaign

Exhibit board for the rethinking of Broadway we led in 2006.

The campaign launched in January 2006 at the Municipal Art Society (MAS) with an exhibit, Livable Streets: A New Vision for New York, designed and directed by PPS. The exhibit covered the problems, myths, and potential of NYC’s traffic dominated streets, showing how cities around the world are addressing similar issues. Photo simulations demonstrated the potential of transforming NYC streets to become great public spaces. The process, methodology and results of a PPS-led community visioning process around the public spaces in the Meatpacking District were presented as well. Over 3,000 people visited the exhibit at MAS, and many more viewed subsequent showings in the gallery space of the Conde Nast building in Times Square and the Brooklyn Public Library. PPS also organized a forum with leaders from Broadway who would soon help implement the radical transformations discussed.

Pilot Projects

The exhibit and the emerging campaign had an immediate impact. The head of the DUMBO Business Improvement District (BID) in Brooklyn was inspired by the vision for the Meatpacking District — which has now also been implemented — to transform excess street space into a public plaza. This space became the first plaza in the New York City Department of Transportation’s Public Plaza Program, part of the Mayor’s PlaNYC initiative, in which the Mayor committed DOT to carving out public plazas from street space in each of the city’s 59 community districts.

Impact

The campaign radically raised the profile of progressive transportation and public space issues and generated demand to bring in a new progressive administration to DOT, and most notably, a new commissioner in 2007. The most direct accomplishment for PPS was to have Andy Wiley-Schwartz, a 10+ year PPS veteran, and director of our transportation program, hired as Assistant Commissioner of Public Spaces for NYC DOT and put in charge of implementing the department’s public spaces initiatives and most of PPS’ demonstration projects. Many other former PPS staff, and close colleagues, steeped in our approach to Placemaking, were also hired by NYC DOT.

Results are visible throughout the city. Since 2007, New York City created 59 public plazas, repurposing 39 acres of road space. The Department of Transportation also added 750 City Benches, and many temporary Street Seats in place of parking spots. 350 miles of new bike lanes, including miles of protected bike lanes, help connect these new public spaces.

Madison Square was just one location where DOT reallocated space for bikes and pedestrians

Expanding the Impact to Lower Income Communities

To bring the efforts of the campaign to lower income neighborhoods, PPS partnered with the City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as part of a team of organizations who received a Food and Fitness grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Under this program, PPS provided training and conducted community workshops in neighborhoods with the highest health disparities in the city, including the South Bronx, central Brooklyn and East Harlem.

PPS also collaborated with Columbia University in a study of 40 commercial streets in poor and non-poor neighborhoods to understand how streetscape features may promote or discourage physical activity among city residents.